the seventh highest toll in the world behind Italy, Spain, China, Iran, France and the United States.

Frontline medical staff in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are already being tested.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson became the first leader of a major power to announce a positive test result for coronavirus on Friday. He is self-isolating in Downing Street but still leading the UK response to the crisis.

“If it is less than 20,000... that would be a good result though every death is a tragedy, but we should not be complacent about that,”

The minister for Scotland, Alister Jack, said on Saturday he had developed a temperature and a cough in the past 24 hours and was now working from home in isolation. He has not been tested for coronavirus.

Efforts were under way to keep building up the NHS’s ability to cope.

“At the moment, I am confident the capacity is there,”

“We have not reached capacity.”

Health workers, who remain in their cars, are tested by nurses who carry out swabs in the nose and mouth through the windows.

In the survey, 81% said the country should continue social distancing initiatives, including ‘shelter at home’ orders, “despite the impact to the economy.” This includes 89% of Democrats and 70% of Republicans.

Only 19% said they would like to end social distancing as soon as possible “to get the economy going again,” including 11% of Democrats and 30% of Republicans.

In comparison, 66% said they would follow the instructions of medical doctors and 64% said they would follow the advice of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

51% said they would follow the advice from their state’s governor and 46% would follow healthcare directions from local police.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,112 adults and has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 3%.

U.S. airlines are set to receive $25 billion in grants to cover payrolls over the next six months

Before the global crisis, U.S. airlines were transporting a record 2.5 million passengers a day. Now planes are only 10% to 20% full and new bookings are showing 80% to 90% declines in traffic even after dramatic cuts in capacity, industry lobby Airlines for America said.

Airlines say the situation is dramatically different from just four weeks ago and getting worse each day with no end in sight. All are planning continued capacity reductions into the summer.

The industry directly supports 750,000 jobs and has argued that it must have the financial ability to jump-start operations once demand starts to return.

The leaders of American Airlines Group Inc, which has the largest workforce of any U.S. carrier, said late Thursday that they had not decided to apply for federal funds, noting that the terms were still unclear.

Still, Mnuchin insisted on Friday that taxpayers would be compensated. “I’ve been very clear this is not an airline bailout,” he told Fox Business Network.

“Currently, from a policymaker’s perspective, it’s a relative balance between managing the spread of the virus and opening the economy.”

But the U.S. stock market benchmark is still down about 25% from its February high.

Even after Friday’s drop, the Dow ended 12.8% higher, its best week since 1938.

Many investors see a strong risk the market could fall deeply again as coronavirus infections increase and more people die, however.

U.S. consumer sentiment dropped to a near 3-1/2-year low in March, according to a survey released on Friday, a day after data showed a record 3 million surge in jobless claims last week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI slumped 4.06% to end at 21,636.78 points, while the S&P 500 .SPX lost 3.37% to 2,541.47.

The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 3.79% to 7,502.38.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 13.4 billion shares, its lowest since March 5, according to Refinitiv data.

Employees who are selected to make the switch can make $19 per hour, a $2 raise on top of the pay hike Amazon announced earlier this month.

“As we continue to see a significant increase in demand for grocery orders, we are offering temporary opportunities for associates across our fulfillment network to provide additional support,” an Amazon spokesperson said on late Friday, confirming the action.

Amazon has been doubling down on the grocery industry since its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017.

Since the outbreak, grocery delivery has become a lifeline for people to get household staples while trying to avoid stepping outside.

So far, coronavirus has spread to at least 17 Amazon warehouses in the U.S., prompting workers and lawmakers to question if enough safety measures have been taken to protect employees on the frontlines.

Grocery stores are competing for workers to fulfill online orders. Walmart, with a fast growing online grocery business, plans to hire 150,000 employees at stores, distribution and fulfillment centers through May.

All in it would supplant perhaps 30% of gross domestic product with government spending and loans, drive the federal deficit as high as needed to make that happen, and broaden U.S. social spending in ways that just a few weeks ago Republicans and President Donald Trump were branding as “socialist.”

Confronting an outside enemy that is imperiling both employers and employees, the well-buffered as well as the uninsured, those concerns have fallen away.

As of Friday the coronavirus had infected more than 100,000 people in the United States, now the world leader in cases of COVID-19, the illness named after the new virus was first identified in China late last year.

Ten of millions will likely face at least a short spell of unemployment - not because business conditions became soft, but because they became dangerous. Epidemiologists have warned that every human interaction increases the risk that the coronavirus spreads uncontrolled.

No doubt there will be second-guessing in the months ahead.

“There will be plenty of soul searching,” once the crisis is past, Eichengreen said. “Attitudes about the appropriate role for government are going to be contested even more than was the case.”

"The epidemiologists say if it's 'close contact' then it's not airborne. That's baloney," he says.

Of course, the world is struggling with a shortage of the most protective medical masks and gear.

What's more, one study of hospital rooms of patients with COVID-19 found that "swabs taken from the air exhaust outlets tested positive, suggesting that small virus-laden droplets may be displaced by airflows and deposited on equipment such as vents." Another study in Wuhan hospitals f

"The U.S. CDC has it exactly right,"

When epidemiologists are working in the field, trying to understand an outbreak of an unknown pathogen, it's not possible for them to know exactly what's going on as a pathogen is spread from person to person, Milton says. "Epidemiologists cannot tell the difference between droplet transmission and short-range aerosol transmission."

For the average person not working in a hospital, Milton says the recommendation to stay 6 feet away from others sounds reasonable.

People shouldn't cram into cars with the windows rolled up, he says, and officials need to keep crowding down in mass transit vehicles like trains and buses.

With coronavirus cases continuing to climb and hospitals facing the prospect of having to decide how to allocate limited staff and resources, the Department of Health and Human Services is reminding states and health care providers that civil rights laws still apply in a pandemic.

States are preparing for a situation when there's not enough care to go around by issuing "crisis of care" standards.

But disability groups are worried that those standards will allow rationing decisions that exclude the elderly or people with disabilities.

On Saturday, the HHS Office for Civil Rights put out guidance saying states, hospitals and doctors cannot put people with disabilities or older people at the back of the line for care.

Severino said his office has opened or is about to open investigations of complaints in multiple states. He did not say which states could be the focus of investigation, but in the last several days, disability groups in four states — Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee and Washington — have filed complaints.

In Kansas and Tennessee, disability groups and people with disabilities say state guidelines would allow doctors to deny care to some people with traumatic brain injuries or people who use home ventilators to help them breathe.

The ventilator issue is coming up in New York, which may soon be the first place where there are not enough ventilators to meet the demand of patients. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state will need double its current amount in about three weeks.

Severino said Saturday that his office was concerned about complaints of possible ventilator reallocation, an issue that had been raised in New York and Kansas.

The PREP Act provides immunity to tort liability claims for manufacturers or drug companies that are asked to scale up quick responses to a disaster such as a nuclear attack or a pandemic.

Severino said his office would investigate civil rights violations and it would be up to another office at HHS, the general counsel's office, to make waivers under the PREP Act.

Some disability advocates have worried whether that exception could be used to trump civil rights laws that protect people with disabilities from treatment decisions.

He was 98 years old.

The Reverend Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, died Friday, according to a statement by the Joseph & Evelyn Lowery Institute for Justice and Human Rights.

The statement said Lowery died peacefully at home Friday night, surrounded by his daughters.

Known affectionately as the "Dean" of the Civil Rights Movement, Lowery was a part of pivotal moments in the nation's history

At an appearance on the national mall in 2013, at the age of 91, he led the crowd in the chant "Fired Up? Ready to go?" The event marked 50 years since the 1963 March on Washington, which Lowery attended as a contemporary of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. At that 50th anniversary appearance, he warned that hard-fought gains were under attack.

Joseph Echols Lowery was born in Huntsville, Alabama in 1921. He was the son of a teacher and a shopkeeper. The young Lowery experienced firsthand the brutalities of the Jim Crow South and would spend his life fighting for racial justice.

One of the first protests he organized was as a young Methodist minister in Mobile, Alabama in the early 1950s. It was aimed at desegregating city buses.

From there, Lowery helped coordinate the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the non-violent movement that desegregated the city's public transportation and led to the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Four decades later, at a gathering of civil rights foot soldiers in Montgomery, Lowery reflected on that accomplishment, noting that the number of black elected officials in the country had gone from less than 300 in 1965 to nearly 10,000 by 2005.

"It changed the face of the nation," said Lowery.

The most-discussed proposals are to make mail-in voting available to all eligible voters nationwide, and to expand early in-person voting to limit the crowds on Election Day.

“Congress failed to include sufficient, urgently needed funds in the stimulus to help states run elections in a time of pandemic,”

Republicans opposed to spending big on balloting changes viewed it as an attempt by Democrats to impose a one-size-fits-all solution on states. Democrats said the price tag reflected the enormity of the task of safeguarding the vote during a pandemic.

“You can’t just flip a switch and vote by mail, this is a very involved process,” Hovland said. “A lot of what is possible in November will be determined now.”

Some officials in both parties still worry they could lose out in a nationwide vote-by-mail system.

Fears about the outbreak, which has now infected more than 85,000 Americans and killed over 1,200, have started to affect Americans’ intentions to vote.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken March 18-24, 63% of adults questioned said they were “completely certain” to vote in November. But that figure dropped to 56% when the respondents were asked to project their behavior if coronavirus were still a factor on Election Day.

But one of the biggest challenges will be familiarizing people with a new way of voting in a very short time, said Tina Barton, the city clerk and chief elections official in Rochester Hills, Michigan.

“It’s going to take a massive education campaign not only to train all your clerks on a new process but also to educate voters,” Barton said.

The Brennan Center estimated the cost of ensuring vote-by-mail was available

for all voters could be up to $1.4 billion, with postage alone costing $600 million. Hovland of the U.S. Election A

But rules differ from state to state. Some states provide postage-paid envelopes. Others do not. Most allow no-excuse absentee voting. Others require a specific reason for not showing up at the polls, such as an illness or travel.

Officials said the numbers would have been worse without a national lockdown.

Italy, the first Western country to introduce severe restrictions on movement after uncovering the outbreak five weeks ago, has since increasingly tightened them, and hopes that they would be eased from next Friday were fading fast.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told a news conference after the figures were released that he had approved a new package of 4.7 billion euros ($5.24 billion) of measures to help those worst hit, including shopping vouchers and food packages.

Italy’s minister for southern regions expressed concerns about potential social tensions and civil unrest in poorer areas if, as expected, the epidemic moves south.

“I am afraid that the worries that are affecting large sections of the population over health, income and the future, with the continuation of the crisis, will turn into anger and hatred,”

Minister Giuseppe Provenzano told La Repubblica newspaper on Saturday.

Michele Emiliano, governor of the southern Puglia region, downplayed played fears of civil unrest in the south but said the lockdown may have to be extended until mid-May.

Not only that, but the introduction of “just in time” manufacturing in recent years means that many companies don’t store the components necessary to keep their factories running. They are dependent on the parts arriving “just in time” from their suppliers, often from thousands of miles away.

There is also spare capacity that is now free to be used

For instance, the closure of car plants across the country means that their fleets of supply trucks will not be needed for the duration

The logistics industry seems confident that it can keep the shops supplied. Christopher Smelling, the Freight Transport Association's head of policy, says that the continuing empty shelves is a result of panic buying, and not a lack of supply.

The UK is also vulnerable because it does not operate in a vacuum, it imports almost half of its food, and therefore the smooth working of other countries supply chains is vital to our own.

At the moment this system still seems to be working. Goods are still arriving from Italy for instance, even though the country is in a shutdown

If coronavirus has shown us anything, it is how complicated and delicate supply chains have become

After this crisis has passed, there is bound to be immense pressure on companies and governments to strengthen and simplify them.

The FTSE, Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nikkei have all seen huge falls since the outbreak began on 31 December.

The Dow and the FTSE recently saw their biggest one day declines since 1987.

Investors fear the spread of the coronavirus will destroy economic growth and that government action may not be enough to stop the decline.

In response, central banks in many countries, including the United Kingdom, have slashed interest rates.

In the United States, the number of people filing for unemployment hit a record high, signalling an end to a decade of expansion for one of the world's largest economies.

The travel industry has been badly damaged, with airlines cutting flights and tourists cancelling business trips and holidays.

Governments around the world have introduced travel restrictions to try to contain the virus.

In the US, the Trump administration has banned travellers from European airports from entering the US.

Supermarkets and online delivery services have reported a huge growth in demand as customers stockpile goods such as toilet paper, rice and orange juice as the pandemic escalates.

In order to stop the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak, many countries across the world have started implementing very tough measures. Countries and world capital have been put under strict lockdown, bringing a total halt to major industrial production chains.

The new images clearly show how a strong reduction in emission is now in place over major cities across Europe - in particular Paris, Milan and Madrid.

In China, where the coronavirus first appeared, industrial production, sales and investment all fell in the first two months of the year, compared with the same period in 2019.

Chinese car sales, for example, dropped by 86% in February. More carmakers, like Tesla or Geely, are now selling cars online as customers stay away from showrooms.

But even the price of gold tumbled briefly in March, as investors were fearful about a global recession.

What's clear at this point, however, is the physical disease that is afflicting tens of thousands of Americans and growing will be accompanied by an economic ailment that adversely affects the lives of millions.

Like Congress, the White House has also seen the coming economic tsunami - and what it could portend.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump said he was anxious to reopen businesses and get Americans back to work

While this is uncharted territory, a nation in economic turmoil early in an election year is a serious threat to a president's political hopes.

There are few more reliable indicators of ballot-box success or failure than the state of the economy.

When times are bad, financial hardship becomes a roar that drowns out all other concerns.

For the moment, the president has seen a modest rise in his public approval ratings, suggesting the possibility of a rally-around-the-leader effect, as Americans accept hardship in order to overcome an external threat.

Trump's call for the nation to get back to work has been echoed by other conservatives who are more bluntly suggesting that aggressive measures to save American lives may not be worth the extended economic distress they require.

Polls also suggest almost half of Stockholmers are remote working.

There are more guidelines than strict rules, with a focus on staying home if you're sick or elderly, washing your hands, and avoiding any non-essential travel, as well as working from home.

Demography may also be a relevant factor in the country's approach. In contrast to the multi-generational homes in Mediterranean countries, more than half of Swedish households are made up of one person, which cuts the risk of the virus spreading within families.

"My wife is also having her own company, so we pretty much depend on ourselves. Business is bad. I still have bills to pay. We're gonna have to call the banks," says owner Al Mocika.

Dr Emma Frans says history will be the judge of which politicians and scientists around Europe have made the best calls so far.

"Nobody really knows what measurements will be the most effective," she says. "I'm quite glad that I'm not the one making these decisions".

It follows criticism over the clarity of government advice to date.

The number of people who have died with coronavirus in the UK has now reached 1,019, with a further 260 deaths announced on Saturday.

There are now 17,089 confirmed cases in the UK.

In the letter being sent to 30 million households at an anticipated cost of £5.8m, Mr Johnson writes: "From the start, we have sought to put in the right measures at the right time.

In his letter, Mr Johnson describes the pandemic as a "moment of national emergency", urging the public to stay at home to protect the NHS and save lives.

He also praises the work of doctors, nurses and other carers as well as well as the hundreds of thousands of people who have volunteered to help the most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, new powers, including fines of up to £5,000, to enforce guidelines on people staying at home and businesses staying closed came into force in Northern Ireland on Saturday evening.

The maximum fine will be reserved for businesses but individuals could face a fine of up to £960 if they do not comply.

Business Secretary Alok Sharma also announced insolvency rules would be changed to allow firms greater flexibility as they faced the coronavirus crisis.

He said a range of measures to boost the supply of personal protective equipment, such as face masks, to protect frontline NHS staff, were also being introduced.

Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack, is self-isolating after he developed coronavirus symptoms. He is said to be experiencing mild symptoms but has not been tested for Covid-19

There are more than 52,000 cases in New York.

The state has about half of the total confirmed Covid-19 cases in the entire US.

Mr Cuomo also said he would sue nearby Rhode Island if the authorities there continued targeting New Yorkers and threatening to punish them for failing to quarantine. Skip Twitter post by @RyanWelchPhotog

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo responded by saying that quarantining the state of New York would be "preposterous" and "anti-American".

"If you said we were geographically restricted from leaving, that would be a lockdown."

He added later: "I don't know how that can be legally enforceable. And from a medical point of view, I don't know what you would be accomplishing.

The CDC then published a statement urging residents of those three states to "refrain" from all non-essential domestic travel for 14 days.

On Friday, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo deployed National Guard troops to stop cars with a New York licence plate, to remind them of their state's advice that they quarantine

Soldiers are going door-to-door in coastal vacation communities to ask if any residents have recently visited New York City.

Tests were done on 170 people in the Vatican and six showed positive, including one of the several dozen permanent residents of the Santa Marta guesthouse on the Vatican grounds

I can confirm that neither the Holy Father nor his closest aides are among these,” he said.

The person who tested positive works in the Secretariat of State and is in a Rome hospital.

The modern residence, which has 130 rooms and suites and a staff of about 30 people, is home to dozens of priests who work in key Vatican departments.

Bruni said the entire residence, which is run like a hotel but has not been accepting temporary guests for the past few weeks, was sanitized.

Francis appears to be in generally good health but part of one of his lungs was removed following an illness when he was a young man.

Since March 6, the Vatican has issued at least five notices or decrees that mirror steps taken in Italy, the hardest hit country in Europe, with more than 10,000 deaths as of Saturday.

Francis has canceled public appearances and is conducting his general audiences via television and the internet. But he still receives about five Vatican officials a day, according to his official calendar.

Critics promptly called the idea unworkable, saying it would cause chaos in a region that serves as the economic engine of the eastern United States, accounting for 10 percent of the population and 12 percent of GDP.

The United States has now recorded more than 122,000 cases of the respiratory virus, the most of any country in the world.

CDC warns residents of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut against non-essential travel

Since the virus first appeared in the United States in late January, Trump has vacillated between playing down the risks of infection and urging Americans to take steps to slow its spread.

Trump said on Saturday afternoon that he might impose a ban on travel in and out of New York and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut,

He offered few specifics.

Trump’s announcement came as the U.S. death count crossed 2,100, more than double the level from two days ago.

The CDC later warned the states’ residents against non-essential domestic travel for 14 days.

It was the latest reversal for Trump, who has been reluctant to order U.S. companies to produce much-needed medical supplies, despite the pleas of governors and hospital workers.

Tests to track the disease’s progress also remain in short supply, despite repeated White House promises that they would be widely available.

Though Trump has apparently opted not to impose checkpoints on highways and airports leading out of New York, some states have imposed limits of their own.

New Yorkers arriving in Florida and Rhode Island face orders to self-isolate if they intend to stay, and the governors of Pennsylvania and West Virginia have asked visiting New Yorkers to voluntarily self-quarantine.

New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu on Saturday asked all visitors to his state who don’t come for work reasons to voluntarily self-quarantine.

New coronavirus cases in China leveled off after the government imposed a strict lockdown of Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease.

Any travel restrictions, voluntary or not, might be too late.

What I am referring to is the fact that, soon after the coronavirus outbreak emerged in China, the rest of the world began to regard it as a threat to public health, while Trump has seen it as a public-relations problem

Trump’s primary method of dealing with public-relations problems is to exert the full force of the authoritarian cult of personality that surrounds him to deny that a problem even exists.

Neither the tide of pestilence sweeping the nation nor the economic calamity that will follow was inevitable

Trump’s first public remarks on the coronavirus came during an interview with the CNBC reporter Joe Kernen on January 22

Kernen asked, “Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?” To which Trump replied, “No. Not at all. And—we’re—we have it totally under control

Except Trump was not preparing

He was consciously contradicting his administration’s own public-health officials at the time.

Nor were the president’s dismissals of the dangers posed by the coronavirus an attempt to buy time for the federal government to appropriately respond.

Medical workers are running out of face masks and gloves. The United States does not have enough ventilators for critically ill patients who need them. States lack sufficient testing capacity to measure the scale of the outbreak. Emergency rooms are overwhelmed. Hospitals are running out of beds. The president is tweeting praise of himself.

In the meantime, doctors, nurses, and EMTs are getting sick

not least because of the actions of Xi Jinping’s own government.

Since then, cases have skyrocketed across the United States, which now has the highest number of confirmed cases anywhere in the world, with more than 100,000 people infected

The U.S., meanwhile, is entering what’s perhaps the darkest phase of its own crisis—its domestic problems hobbling it from providing significant international aid or coordinating a comprehensive response. (The U.S. announced on Thursday that it had made available $274 million in emergency aid to 64 countries.)

As recently as yesterday, Xi offered Chinese support to the U.S. in a phone call with Trump.

This is happening all around the world now,” says David Shullman, a China expert at the International Republican Institute. “[There] is a really long list of places where China is offering this equipment and assistance …

Most immediately, it could mean that the coronavirus ground zero continues to generate and export more cases

Desperate countries were happy to accept Chinese help

The real short-term risk of China’s leadership exercise is that, should the country make the calculation to prize its economic health over public-safety concerns, other countries contending with the pandemic’s economic devastation may find themselves tempted to follow suit

. At that point, the China model may look even more tempting.

I’m a geriatrician at UC San Francisco, whose medical center consistently ranks in the top 10 nationally and as the best on the West Coast

Our response to COVID-19 has been remarkable in its intensity and scope.

During my nearly 30-year medical career here, I’ve never witnessed anything like the system-wide mobilization I’ve seen in recent weeks. And yet some of what I’m seeing is also disturbing, especially because my geriatrics colleagues around the country say that elder-specific needs and medical science aren’t being adequately addressed at their centers either.

health-screening procedures for visitors were put into place at our children’s hospital at the start of March, while similar procedures weren’t implemented for our adult hospital until two weeks later.

Transgressions like these are minor in the face of global calamity

Let me be perfectly clear: I’m not witnessing the actions of malicious, underperforming people

On the contrary, UCSF leadership has been heroic and selfless, working around the clock to provide the best care possible to those with COVID-19 while protecting other patients and staff

Medical schools devote months to teaching students about child physiology and disease, and years to adults, but just weeks to elders; geriatrics doesn’t even appear on the menu of required training

Public responses to the coronavirus pandemic on social media have laid bare the not-so-subtle interplay between medical culture and American culture at large